Hello, beautiful humans and welcome to the mental Wellness.
Wake up, show a weekly podcast where growth minded creative
people, come to learn, best practices from both spirituality
and psychology that create lasting well-being.
I am your host mental Wellness, expert improvised acting teacher
therapist and Coach, Don McMillan.
Let's get to it. It.
Hello friends. So what I want to talk about
today is the lazy crazy unmotivated as in why are you so
lazy crazy and unmotivated? But before we get into the
answer to that question, spoiler alert, you are not.
I want to apologize for the weird editing in the last
episode. I had a major coughing fit in
the middle of recording a cut that out.
It sounded fine to me, but when I downloaded it to listen to it
off of the service that I use, it was a little bizarre but
based on the feedback that I have been getting from all of
you, the important parts were kept in.
So I just want to thank you for those of you who have reached
out to me to tell me just how meaningful that anxiety episode
was for you, and if you haven't listened to it yet, go back and
listen to it. It really?
Ali can make a huge difference in the relationship that you
have with your own anxiety. Also before we get into today's
episode, I just want to thank you for listening at all.
We are growing by Leaps and Bounds all over the world, it's
super exciting and we're creating a community of people
who are choosing to get better and so when we choose to get
better, we do Do better. And it becomes this ripple
effect all around the planet. And I think we can all agree
that the planet or whole not the plan at the people on it.
Really needs some, some peace and some joy and some up
leveling and some Harmony and we're all contributing to that.
So yay. Yes whoo.
Whoo. All right.
Lazy crazy unmotivated. Have you ever accused yourself
of being one of those things? I raise my hand.
I know I have we have a feeling in this culture that we should
be awake and I'm a American but I think there are other cultures
who are as bad as us that we should be awake 16 to 20 hours a
day. And during those 16 to 20 hours,
we should be completely productive grinding going after
it making, it happen, doing the thing, picking names, kicking
names, kicking, butt and taking names.
And if we are not Not, if we are not going for it, going after it
building, the Empire becoming a mogul, all the things that
there's something wrong with us. And then we wonder, I just can't
get motivated. Why am I so lazy?
I just can't get motivated. Why am I so crazy?
I get distracted all the time and I can't just knuckle down.
We think we are lazy crazy or unmotivated and that if we just
Ourselves up enough or read enough affirmations that then
we'll get up, we'll get focused and we'll do the things that we
think we should do. The problem is lazy, crazy and
unmotivated are not what's going on.
And so beating ourselves up or trying to knuckle down or use
force on ourselves is not going to solve the problem.
So here comes Bertram. So what actually is going on?
On for, let's talk about trauma. Yes.
Trauma again, some more still. So lots of us like to think that
either. We don't have trauma.
Some people are like, my parents were good.
My childhood was fine. I don't have any trauma because
they can't name anything, particularly horrific, that
happened to them. So, let's talk about trauma
first, because, what we think trauma is is Mama, but we're
understanding it incorrectly. So Stephen gosh.
What's his name? Steven Levine and best over
Bessel. Van Der kolk who are pioneers
and the realm of noticing how the body stores.
The trauma, kind of break it down to trauma.
That is anything that is too much too fast or too soon.
What does that mean too? Much means any Stimulation.
That overwhelms, your coping skills that does not have to be
something bad. It doesn't have to be a fire.
It doesn't have to be a war. Anything that overwhelms, your
ability to cope in. That moment is too much and
that's a trauma, someone that, I know actually had a traumatic
fifth birthday. Why?
Because it was a surprise party and having all of those people
jump out and scream at this person.
Was overwhelming. And so what was meant to be a
joyous occasion was actually a trauma.
So if you're looking for traumas and you think, oh, a surprise
party is a trauma. Not for everyone, but it was for
this person because it was too much too fast.
If someone accelerates your sexual activity, in a way that
you're not ready for that can be traumatic if you have.
Have too many changes at once that can be traumatic, you move
change jobs, have a baby, get married, have knee surgery, and
all of those things too fast. Maybe you're coping, sit skills
would be able to deal with them if they came one at a time.
But when they come all in a row, that becomes a trauma or Too
Soon, a lot of trauma around abuse sexual and otherwise is
that people are treating. Children like adults.
If if you were going to get away from sexual trauma right now,
but if you are eight years old and you have to take care of
your 64 and two-year-old siblings, because your parents
are out of commission due to addiction that is too soon.
Being a parent at eight is too soon so too much too fast or Too
Soon is going to get coated in your body as well as trauma.
And so motivation is a conscious process.
Trauma responses are an unconscious process.
So what happens is we will be in a trauma response and will think
we're lazy or crazy because it's contrary to our conscious
intention Lisa. Feldman, Barrett does a lot of
wonderful research. She has a book called seven and
a half truths about the brain and she has another one.
How emotions are made? If you read these two books, it
will upend what you think is true.
They stood for me, our popular conception of how the brain
works. How emotions work, how we work
is just wrong, it's wrong. So trauma response can be
explained by this your body, your mind, your body, might your
mind, body is not in the business of making you happy,
it's in the business of keeping you alive.
And one of the primary functions of your brain is to predict your
energy needs and prepare accordingly, predict your energy
needs and prepare accordingly. So what this looks like out on
the Savannah is Is that if your your brain body senses that you
may be in a situation where game and food is scarce, your body
will switch into conservation, it will slow everything down, it
will shut you down to conserve energy because it does not know
when you're going to get your next meal.
That shutdown. Looks a lot like being lazy.
It looks a lot like depression. It looks a lot like the Being
unmotivated. If your body brain senses that
you are currently in a situation of danger, it will keep you
moving in order to keep you safe.
So if your brain body senses a, we're not safe or not safe, keep
it moving, keep it moving, keep it moving.
If you got to stay in action, otherwise, the Tigers going to
get you. That's going to look like, I
can't focus. That's gonna look like ADD ADHD.
That's going to look like I sit down to do my homework and my
brain is racing. So the trauma response is really
are. Your brain.
Body is trying to allocate your energy for current or future
threats. So if your brain senses that
you're under threat, now, it's going to keep you moving
distracted and running around out.
If your brain senses that a threat to maeby coming, it's
going to shut you down in anticipation of saving that
energy for the future. So how does this help us
understand? Innovation.
So you think, okay, consciously, I did my New Year's resolutions,
I'm going to do, I'm going to do all of these wonderful things to
uplevel my life and make my life better.
Yeah. And then what you find yourself
doing instead is watching cute little animal videos on
Instagram for two or three hours.
Well, what's that for? Some reason, your body brain
senses. The idea that you're going to be
in danger in the near future and you better Just keep it down now
so that when you need to run or fight you have plenty of
resources, your body brain, doesn't want you to squander
your resources on going to the gym.
If you're going to have to fight later or your body bring feels
unsafe right now, it feels unsafe and so it keeps you
agitated so that you can fight or flee sidebar, we always say
fight flight or freeze, that's really not the order that you're
Nobody chooses your body's first response is to flee fight and
freeze will only come into play. If you can't get away just a
sidebar because we always judge ourselves for our, our flea and
freeze responses, and we think we should always fight but your
body prefers fleeing because what's safer, fighting a
saber-toothed tiger or not having the saber-toothed tiger
around you, but I digress. So what we're judging ourselves
for as Lazy or crazy is a trauma response.
And the myth is that we need to understand or know what the
trauma is in order to solve it. That is a lie.
What we need to do is become exquisitely, interested in
understanding our own trauma response, so we know how to
counteract it. So if you are completely
unmotivated, you're feeling lazy, your body is shut down.
Your body is saving and storing energy for future threat.
And so, once you to conserve energy, now we talked last week
about panic and anxiety episodes.
So a lot of times, the anxiety and depression will be like this
pendulum swinging, and so when you're not currently having an
anxiety episode, your body will shut down into a depression
trauma. Vaughn's in anticipation of the
anxiety episode, to make sure you have enough energy.
Does that make sense? If you have ever or you have
ever restricted food, consciously hear me diet if your
ancestors had food scarcity, there is very likely in your
body, a tendency towards shut down either.
By restricting your food have either.
Earlier involuntarily or being descended from people who lived
through famines or who had food scarcity for any reason, may
predispose you to that shutdown, you have encoded in your nervous
system. The idea that food is scarce.
It's better just to keep the energy as low as possible for as
long as possible so that you will survive.
Remember your brain is not in the business of keeping you
happy or motivated, or rich or are popular.
It's in the business. Of keeping you alive contrarily.
If you have had Invasion, traumas, where things have
happened to you, think about those things, the example that I
gave you of the five-year-old birthday party, that felt so
scary and overwhelming to that person.
That's a kind of an invasion trauma.
And so that's going to predisposed towards agitation
being scattered being jumpy, you know, and you can fill in your
own examples of other kinds of Invasion.
Traumas, that would keep you predisposed towards, I'm not
safe. I'm not safe.
I'm not safe.
So we got to learn what our body signals are.
So if you notice that, you can't focus, think to yourself,
something about what's happening right now is making me feel like
I am not safe. I'm not crazy.
I'm having a trauma response. If you notice that you're
feeling are quotes, unmotivated, lazy, you're not, you're having
a trauma response and you tell yourself this trauma response
today thinks I need to conserve energy for a future threat.
And now let's think about some of what we can do to counteract
that. So I'm going to borrow again
from Britt Frank. Her book is so good.
So here is some some suggestions.
Okay? Let's say you are stuck in the
agitated State. First thing to do is to notice,
I can't focus on feeling agitated.
I'm all over the place. I'm having a trauma response.
This is a physiological process, I am not crazy.
And then you want to get into your senses.
You want to do, find a way to blanket and essential oil, is
soft music. A warm tea.
You want to count backwards from some weird number.
Like 37, you want to get your body to get out of that complete
agitation and into a safer feeling.
And to say four senses, you want to do that, classic grounding
skill Five things, you can see four things.
You can hear three things, you can touch two things.
You can smell one thing, you can taste.
You might want to get the trauma response out of your body.
Do jumping jacks, push as hard on a wall as you possibly can to
activate those muscles and then release it.
Look for some place in your body that isn't activated and focus
on that. Put your, put your hand on your
pets, heart and count, their heart beats for a few minutes.
You want to get very very into the body in a way that tells
your body. We're safe right now, one of my
favorite exercises for bringing out of that agitated on On
nervous system on state is to use your peripheral vision, if
you wear glasses, it's really handy.
While you're staring. Straight Ahead.
Use your peripheral vision to focus on the arms of your
glasses at because we are predators eyes in front love to
hunt eyes on this. I'd love to hide because we are
predators. When we fit sense, danger, we
get what's called tunnel vision, we are extremely focused.
When we are calm and relaxed, we have a wider field of vision.
So mechanically using a wider field of vision.
Like looking at the corners of your glasses are doing that
exercise, where you put your fingers together in front of
you, keep your eyes focused in the front of you and then slowly
bring your fingers out to the side.
Seeing how far out you can get them and still see them while
holding your eyes still. So, one of my favorite things to
do is to get into peripheral vision.
Okay. What about the other thing?
You're stuck in the dorsal vagal state.
Depression, the first thing to do is remind yourself.
You are not lazy or unmotivated, you tell yourself I am having a
trauma response. This is a body thing.
I am not crazy and then you want to shake yourself out of it.
Ice-cold really good for it. You want to rub an ice cube on
your forehead. Drop an ice cube down the back
of your shirt, put An ice pack on your neck.
Take a cold shower, Splash, cold water, on your face, cold is a
great state change. So, cold is one of my favorite
go twos and be sure not to get caught in the.
Why it is a, it is a lie in an illusion that you need to know
why. Something is happening in order
to solve it. That's true in engineering.
It is not true. In the human heart.
You do not need to know why. You're Having a trauma response
in order to do something about it.
You just need to know that you are having a trauma response in
order to do something about it. Make sure you watch yourself
talk. Watch yourself talk.
Don't don't say, oh, I'm drowning.
I'm so overwhelmed. I'll never make it.
I'm, I'm buried alive. Watch yourself talk and get
super specific. So if you were feeling hashtag,
hashtag the air quotes unmotivated feelingly See
depressed, forget the emotion words and use fats.
What's on your list of things that you are supposed to be
doing? Write them down specifically.
You might want to, you can shock your senses with something.
Sour like a bite of lemon. You're noticing a trend here,
right? We want to shock the body.
Wake it up a little bit. So, cold water squirting.
A lemon under your tongue. Move your Your Body Move Your
Body mechanically and it'll give your body a hint to keep moving
dance party. Dance party works for both, put
on some music, put on, put on some music and dance it out like
a five minute dance break will help get your stress response
out of your body and if you are in an agitated State, it'll help
calm it down. And if you are an unmotivated
State, just And around for a little while will help.
So what have we learned today? Your brain is in the business of
keeping you alive and I keeping you happy or rich or popular
Your brains work. One of its primary jobs is to
predict your energy needs and budget accordingly.
There is a viral blog or post or something that went around
recently about spoons and the idea being that every day, you
get a certain amount of spoons and certain activities, take up
a certain amount of spoons. And then when you're done for
the day, you're done for the day.
That is your brain, budgeting your energy based on its
predictions One of the things that therapy can help you do is
to make your predictions more accurate.
If you are actually safe, and your brain is judging you as
being unsafe, it is in accurately, predicting, your
energy needs it. Thinks you need to run and fight
right now when actually, you are completely fine and sitting at a
desk in an office or it thinks that you better conserve all of
your energy because you never know when something terrible is
going to happen, or you have to conserve Your energy because you
never know if this is the time where the food stops coming.
Right? So part of what we do in therapy
is as you resolve. These traumas, it helps your
brain make better predictions when your brain makes better
predictions. Then it's going to do a better
job at allocating your spoons, your daily energy budget, and
you'll be better able to achieve your goals.
You are not lazy or crazy or unmotivated for whatever reason.
You're having a trauma response and you do not need to know what
that reason is. You need to acknowledge notice
it and do the thing that will shake you out of it.
Okay, so there's a lot in this episode, there's a lot.
So we just want to break it down.
Notice you're having a trauma response and then make a choice.
Make a choice. Make a choice, every action, you
take is a vote in favor of the kind of person that you want to
be. Calling yourself.
Lazy is not making a vote for yourself.
Call, you lazy is call yourself lazy.
It's just going to make it worse.
Calling yourself crazy is just going to make it worse.
When you notice, you're not doing the things that you want
to do a little self compassion. And then make a choice, get up
and dance, get up and dance, get up and get grounded, get up and
get cold, whatever it takes. And then notice just notice how
that pattern interrupt feeds you and the more you make choices in
favor of yourself, the better, your brain is going to Edit
allocating that budget right? It becomes this virtuous cycle.
So I hope this has been helpful. You are not lazy or crazy or
unmotivated and you don't have to spend the next 15 years.
In therapy resolving all of your traumas before you can start to
get moving. Please do, go to therapy, please
do go to therapy. And when you notice that trauma
response in your body, make a choice to do.
One of the things that I suggested or something of your
own creation to break that state and get you.
In alignment with what it is that you decided you wanted.
And you know why it's important for you to be in alignment with
what you have, decided that you wanted, because you're awesome,
because you're amazing because you are whole, perfect, and
complete, and you are worthy and deserving of a Life.
So Glorious. That transcends.
Even your own imagination. Thank you for being here.
And I mean, that on the planet thank you for being on the
planet. I am so glad to be going through
this very interesting time on planet.
Earth with you. I'm glad to have you as a
companion on this journey and thank you for being here at the
podcast. I enjoy spending this time with
you so much until next time.